Very Bat-heavy segment this week. I will tell you this, one of these panels annoyed the hell out of me.
Riddle me this! Why doesn’t Tony Daniel take photographs of letters and numbers?
Amazing Spider-Man #611
Joe Kelly and Eric Canete
Batgirl #4
Bryan Q. Miller, Tim Levins and Lee Garbett
Last time, I discussed the first few issues of Chaos Comics’ Undertaker, as well as the specials that came from it. The Undertaker, Paul Bearer and a newly-created character the Embalmer each hold a Book of the Dead and are going to war over who can get all three Books and become the ruler of Stygian, Hell’s prison. Meanwhile, Kane is sneaking around, watching the Undertaker and Mankind is able to see that some of the wrestlers in the WWF are really demons in disguise.
Just for shits and giggles, for those of you reading who don’t follow wrestling or haven’t followed it for long, here’s a list of some of the Undertaker’s silliest storylines:
– Fought a nearly 8-foot-tall dude who wore a muscle suit with fur covering the shoulders and crotch. Their “epic” battle at Wrestlemania 9 ended with this big dude, Giant Gonzales, chloroforming the Undertaker. This got Undertaker a win via disqualification and they always have to sidestep this fact when they go over how the Undertaker is undefeated at Wrestlemania and show a highlight reel.
– A match was set for Survivor Series of Lex Luger and his patriotic American guys vs. Yokozuna and his evil foreigners. Due to a last-minute injury, they needed someone to step into Luger’s team. This spot was filled by the Undertaker, who proceeded to do a lengthy promo that compared his gimmick to what America is all about. He ended it by growling, “Let freedom RIIIIIIIING…” and opened up his jacket to reveal a 1776 American flag stitched on the inside. Lex Luger saw this and got way too pumped about it.
– Undertaker had a match against Yokozuna where you won by stuffing your opponent into a casket. Just about every bad guy in the WWF came out to help Yokozuna by ganging up on the Undertaker and shoving him in the casket. As the casket is wheeled away, the big screen above the entrance shows a camera inside the casket, where the Undertaker promises he will return. Then he (or Marty Janetty in an Undertaker costume) flies off into the heavens on strings.
– The Undertaker delivered a Dominos pizza to Leslie Neilson as part of the lead up for the Undertaker to fight his evil doppelganger.
– The Undertaker had a rematch against Yokozuna, this time with Chuck Norris there to make sure nobody interfered this time.
I can go on with this for days. To be fair, I do really love the Undertaker and he has had his share of kickass moments. Like that time Paul Bearer did an interview from the safety of his own home and Undertaker burst in, yelling, “Did you think I forgot where you live?!” and pummeled the everloving hell out of him. Then it cut to the arena’s locker room, many miles away as Kane went into a hysteric crying rampage and Mankind had to try and calm him down. That was neat.
Time for another installment of TWiP. Or should we call it ThWiP? That makes it a comic pun. Whatever. Reader Solenna had us include a panel of Psylocke #1 to show that according to her, the comic can be summed up with “sphere boobs”.
Batman Confidential #36
Royal McGraw and Marcos Marz
The Boys #36
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson
Here we go with the biggest week yet of this. Big week for Punisher and Ares, so if you like badasses with skulls on their chests, there you go. Ambush Bug was apparently an almost complete rewrite of what was supposed to be #6, so the panel in question isn’t supposed to say, “This is how funny the comic is.” It’s more, “They’re telling the truth and joking about them joking about it doesn’t stop it from being bad.”
Ambush Bug #7 (of 6)
Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Art Baltazar and Franco
Anti-Venom: New Ways to Live #2
Zeb Wells, Paulo Siqueira and Chad Hardin
Here’s my favorite Halloween-related thing. Back in the day, Alice Cooper was abducted by Jason Voorhees. The Terminator decided that Axl Rose wasn’t worth killing. Both the Fat Boys and the Fresh Prince were each terrorized by Freddy Krueger.
But Dokken doesn’t play that weak shit. Kick his ass, Don! WITH ROCK!
The history of the WWF/WWE can more or less be broken up into eras. There’s the Golden Age, followed by the Hogan Era, followed by the New Generation, followed by the Attitude Era, followed by the Crossover Era, followed by the Cena Era. At least, that’s how I see it. The Attitude Era is easily the most successful era, regarded for bringing wrestling into the media forefront. Chronologically, it begins with Stone Cold Steve Austin’s rise as a top face and ends with Wrestlemania 17, where Austin turns on the fans shortly after the company had freshly bought their competition, WCW.
Professional wrestling was at its apex during this era, mostly due to WWF and WCW trying to outdo each other. It seems silly now, but the idea of a WWF comic was pretty natural back then. In 1999, Chaos Comics got the rights to the property and let loose with a handful of comics. Mankind, The Rock and Chyna each got their own one-shot, while Steve Austin got a four-issue miniseries. I’ll save those for a later day.
Today I’m going to discuss The Undertaker’s comic. Unlike the others, he got a full-blown series out of the deal. It lasted 10 issues, plus specials. On one hand, it makes sense. Undertaker was always one of the most unrealistic and open-ended characters in the WWF. On the other hand, during the release of this series, Undertaker was the top heel of the company. We’re basically meant to root for the WWF’s top villain.
I’ll get into a who’s who for those uninitiated with wrestling in a bit, but first I’ll go over the Undertaker Halloween Special. While it did come out towards the end of the series, it doesn’t exactly fit in with anything and makes as a good introduction to the four wrestling-based characters.
Covering Frankenstein is probably the best way for me to end the Dell Monster Trilogy, just because it is easily the best of the three comics. I realize that doesn’t mean much, and believe me, it doesn’t. It’s still pretty bad. It’s just that it’s the only one that feels like it could be a comic book worth reading.
Dracula was very loosely based on the source material and wasn’t quite as fun a concept as it could have been. Werewolf had literally nothing to do with its source material and despite the utter insanity of the story, was really boring for the most part. Frankenstein is the closest to the source and comes across as genuinely amusing for an old 60’s comic at points. It isn’t much, but it’s still the cream of the crop.
Like the other two, the creative team is believed to be Dan Segall and Tony Tallarico. Much like Dracula, Dell refers to the comic book adaptation of the Frankenstein movie that they released years earlier to be Frankenstein #1. The start of the superhero stuff is considered the second issue.
I can’t be the only one who sees Dell Frankenstein and thinks of Captain Murphy from Sealab 2021, can I? I kept hearing his voice for every one of Frankenstein’s word bubbles.
It begins promising enough with the shot of an abandoned castle that hasn’t been touched in about a century. We soon after find out that this is in America and that it’s only miles away from a major city (Metropole City), but at least the atmosphere is there. A huge bolt of lightning crashes through the roof and hits a slab below. On the slab is a body lying and dressed in red spandex with boots. For no reasons explained, his head is green-skinned and the rest of his body appears Caucasian. The bolt awakens him and he sits up, confused.
To make up for last week’s lackluster batch, we’ve returned with more substance this time.
Amazing Spider-Man #609
Marc Guggenheim, Marco Checchetto and Luke Ross
Azrael #1
Fabian Nicieza and Ramon Bachs
Thunderbolts #137 came out this week, written by Rick Remender and drawn by Mahmud A. Asrar. It’s a decent issue, though it really reads more as Luke Cage and Iron Fist Featuring the Thunderbolts. I’m one of those who doesn’t have a problem with that idea, so bring it on.
I bring this scene to your attention. Under the leadership of Ghost (who I like to think of as Earth-3 Rorschach), the team has successfully captured and brainwashed Iron Fist. Now they discuss matters over lunch.
The lack of tray in front of Ghost is some good continuity.
Anyway, the Irredeemable Ant-Man is thinly referencing the TV show Jon and Kate Plus Eight, starring Jon and Kate Gosselin. I’ve never seen the show for myself outside of the clips shown on The Soup, so I at least get the gist. Ant-Man’s description, while random to the situation, is still on point. Before the two announced their divorce, the show was about Kate being a total ice bitch 24/7 while Jon seems a step away from suicide. Apparently, people really like this.
I bring this up because while I don’t partake in the show, I have a loose connection to Kate Gosselin. About nine months ago, she did a book signing at the Barnes & Noble I work at. It was a really big deal and had a huge turnout. Thankfully, I was on vacation so I didn’t have to deal with it.
My co-workers, on the other hand, had many problems. From every single account, Kate Gosselin was a complete nightmare to deal with. She had them change the signing to a day later at the last minute, which caused us headaches and screwed with the customers who couldn’t be in the loop. She didn’t greet a single customer or employee throughout the night. She had no reaction towards the flowers we got for her. She refused any and all photos and would only sign either copies of her book or the first season of her show. She refused to make eye-contact with any of her fans, including a sick, little girl who was at the front of the line. She wanted to leave an hour early, even though she obviously wasn’t done. Like I said, a total nightmare to deal with.
The general consensus at the store was that Kate Gosselin is a bitch, but others would go far enough to straight-up refer to her as a cunt. Now, in the workplace, it’s hard to throw that word around safely, so we came up with a way to make it easier. From then on, we would retire the C-word and replace it with “Kate”.
“Then she got kicked right in the Kate.”
“That one customer who demanded to do a return without a receipt was acting like such a Kate.”
“Jeff Goldblum’s first line in any movie is Deathwish, where he says, ‘Goddamn rich Kates! I KILL RICH KATES!'”
You’d… You’d be surprised how much that last one comes up…
Now, then. Let’s go back to Thunderbolts as Mr. X gets in Ant-Man’s face. Makes sense for Mr. X to be angry, considering Remender nearly ruins him completely in one issue.
Haha! See? Art is imitating life. I love it.
Pretty small batch this week. hermanos is busy at that APE thing, so nothing from him. Esther insisted on including the Blue Beetle back-up from Booster Gold #25. Something about the “fangirls running the asylum.”
Batgirl #3
Bryan Q. Miller and Lee Garbett
Booster Gold #25
Dan Jurgens
